Rachel grinned. She went to take Jon’s arm, smiles begat smiles, and by the time they reached Mara Òran Bay they were in such high spirits they raced one another along the silver-white sands and into little coves that were private and sheltered and just made to be lingered in when it became imperative to steal a few laughing kisses.
Chapter Eleven
As it happened, Mamma took Rhanna by storm, completely disconcerting everyone she met, and as that included some of the less staid inhabitants, she was destined to make her mark in a way that would always be uniquely hers and hers alone.
In the first instance she bumped into Dodie, literally. With his head down because he was crying and didn’t want anyone to see, he came loping swiftly along the road, the tails of his greasy old raincoat flying behind him, his fists screwed into his eyes, so blinded by tears he couldn’t see where he was going and cared less. Full tilt into Mamma he careered, and the impact stopped him so thoroughly in his tracks he staggered backwards, shaking his head as if to clear it, all the wind knocked out of his sails.
Dodie was not in the best of moods: he had just had a terrible argument with Wullie McKinnon over the subject of his cockerels. At first it had been an amicable enough encounter, Wullie had strolled into Croft Beag, going over in his mind what to say to the old man that wouldn’t offend him too much because it was an easy enough matter to bring him to a state of tears. So Wullie had been lost in thought when he encountered Dodie, and Dodie, taking his neighbour’s mild manner as an indication that the rift between them had healed, had been very courteous and attentive, showing Wullie his vegetable and flower plots and the patch of richly manured ground where he grew the juicy sticks of rhubarb that were his pride and joy.
He had also hastened to make Wullie a strupak and it was while they were ensconced in the kitchen, drinking tea and eating the pancakes that soft-hearted Mairi had handed in earlier, that the visitor had gradually brought the talk round to poultry.
‘Your hens will be laying well the now, Dodie,’ Wullie had begun obliquely, maintaining an unnatural politeness in view of his reasons for being there.
‘Oh ay, indeed they are,’ Dodie agreed eagerly, dunking his pancake into his tea and quickly stuffing the soggy particle into his mouth before it disintegrated into his cup. ‘Every morning I go to the hen hoosie to see how many eggs my hens have had.’
‘Ach, hens don’t have eggs,’ Wullie said scornfully, ‘they lay them.’
‘They have eggs,’ Dodie persisted, ‘and then the eggs have chickens – tis the natural way o’ things.’
‘But eggs don’t have chickens, chickens just come out o’ the eggs, Dodie,’ an exasperated Wullie cried.
‘Ay,’ Dodie said patiently, feeling that his visitor needed to be humoured, ‘the same way as a calf comes out o’ Ealasaid.’
Wullie tried another tactic. ‘Cockerels don’t lay eggs, do they, Dodie? They just strut about all day, treading the hens and yelling their heads off. They’re no’ really much good to anyone, all they do is make a God-awful racket and, eat up all the food.’
Dodie sighed. ‘Ach, but, Wullie, you were brought up on a croft, surely you know the only way that hens can have chickens is to be treaded by the cockerels.’
He spoke to Wullie as if to a child who needed the facts of life explained to him carefully and gently.
‘One cockerel, Dodie.’ Wullie was losing some of his cool; he brushed away a drip from the end of his nose with an agitated hand. ‘One cockerel is all it takes to father hundreds o’ chickens.’ He paused – he was beginning to sound like the old eccentric. ‘To fertilize hundreds o’ eggs,’ he amended hastily. ‘Six is just a waste o’ time and a buggering nuisance into the bargain.’ His temper was rising and he stood up, unable to sit still for a moment longer. ‘I’ll get rid o’ them for you in no time, just a wee twist and it will all be over, you don’t even have to watch.’
Dodie was horrified; he had never been able to bring himself to kill anything, far less his beloved chickens, who had proliferated unchecked when he had lived in his lonely cottage up on the hill. Holy Smoke had already offered to thraw the cockerels’ necks and string them up in his shop, affably saying he would share the proceeds with Dodie. He had been rubbing his hands together at the time, an action peculiar to him when talking about money.
Dodie had simply turned tail and run from the scene to tell the story to the first person he met. ‘He calls himself a man o’ God,’ he had sobbed, ‘when he is nothing but a heathen goin’ round killing poor, defenceless animals.’ And now, here was Wullie McKinnon, uttering the self-same murderous words as the butcher man. In panic Dodie had risen to his feet to order Wullie out of his house and never to darken his door again.
‘I’ll be back!’ Wullie had yelled. ‘And next time it will be wi’ a shotgun! I’ll do more than scare the shit out o’ these bloody birds o’ yours! I’ll blast the lot to kingdom come and think o’ the deed wi’ pleasure when I’m lying sleeping in my bed for the first time in months.’
Dodie had been really scared then, and in his fright he had taken to his heels, straight to the village to tell his woes to someone. That the first person he bumped into should be Mamma was, to his simple mind, just a continuation of his experiences with Wullie, and he backed away from this large, strange woman, the tears coursing in dirty rivulets down his sunken cheeks.
She was so taken aback she began to rant at him in German while he babbled back in Gaelic. To make matters worse, Dodie’s pet lamb had followed him into the village and, being a ram lamb, it was only too ready for a bit of fun and games. It charged straight for Mamma and playfully butted her in her stiffly corseted rear. She shrieked, Dodie’s nose frothed with fear and for the second time that day he took to his heels and galloped away, the lamb gambolling behind him.
Mamma stared after them. In no time at all they had disappeared from view and she blinked, feeling that she might have imagined the whole episode – had not her stinging backside given her a grim reminder that it had all really happened. But Mamma was made of stern stuff: in next to no time she had girded her loins and was able to take stock of her surroundings. Jon had certainly been correct in telling her that only a few shops serviced the village, but some was better than none and, fully recovered from her experiences with Dodie, she made purposeful tracks for the nearest shop.
Into Merry Mary’s she charged, going straight to the head of the little queue and completely ignoring Kate McKinnon who had been first in line and who was rendered speechless for at least thirty seconds.
‘You have for me the pastries?’ Mamma demanded of Merry Mary. ‘I am liking fresh my apfelstrudel; for me the stodge I do not want, it chokes up the system.’
Mamma used a very peremptory tone – after her encounter with Dodie she was taking no chances with anyone else, her idea being that if you got in there first you would show them who was the boss. In Mamma’s book anyone who stood at the business side of a counter must be made to understand that the customer was always right and they existed to serve and no questions about it.
Merry Mary was completely taken aback: one minute she had been having a nice cosy blether with her customers, the next she was suddenly faced with this huge monument of a woman with a face on her that would have floored Goliath himself. The little English woman could only stare open-mouthed but Kate, who had recovered her powers of speech, had enough to say for the two of them. Tapping Mamma on one formidable shoulder, she said ominously, ‘And just who do you think you are, madam? Barging in here in front o’ everybody without as much as a by-your-leave?’
Mamma chose to deal with the first part of the question and ignore the rest. ‘I am Frau Helga Jodl,’ she intoned proudly, pulling herself up to her full, impressive height and thrusting out her considerable bosom, much to the enjoyment of Robbie Beag who admired well-upholstered women. ‘I am mutter of Jon Jodl who is married to Rachel Jodl, the famous violinist.’
It was typical of Mamma: very seldom had she
praised Rachel to her face, but if she could capitalize on her name she never hesitated to do so. In this instance she hoped that it would intimidate this rather fierce-looking woman whose own generous bosom had further blossomed in the last few minutes.
‘Oh, is that so,’ Kate nodded conversationally, ‘our very own Rachel, eh? I hope she will teach you some of our manners while you are here, for though I say it myself, Rachel aye did have good manners and her being famous hasny altered matters in that respect.’
‘Rachel! Manners!’ Mamma spat. ‘Pah! I have yet to see these manners you speak about, she is not showing them to me since her marriage to my son. She cannot speak, no, but her eyes, they send the rude messages. She has not the respect for her elders, she has the solkiness, she . . .’
‘She is my granddaughter,’ Kate finished Mamma’s sentence in her own words, her sparking eyes sending out dangerous signals of anger yet controlled.
In the face of such righteous ire Mamma hadn’t a leg to stand on. She backed off, wishing with all her mighty might that she was back home in Hamburg where the shopkeepers scurried to her bidding, which meant that she was always served and on her way home before anyone else. Taking a deep breath, she turned her back on Kate and was about to address Merry Mary once more when a voice, even more forbidding than Kate’s, spoke at her elbow.
‘Just a minute, just a minute! Who said you could go first, Mrs Whatever? I was here before you and I am no’ waiting a damt minute longer to get served, so just you get out o’ the way at once and let me in there before I am forced to take action.’
Mamma turned to see the round face of Aggie McKinnon, who was related to Kate through marriage, glaring at her. If there had been a contest on physical proportions between the two, Aggie would have won hands down, not only was she as rotund as an elephant, she towered above the other woman to such a degree that Mamma was dwarfed by her.
Aggie was normally a sweet-natured, placid soul who liked to agree with everyone for the sake of peace. In common with most of the islanders she enjoyed a good chin-wag and usually never minded if she was last out of whatever shop she happened to be in, but this morning she was in a hurry. She had already wasted a lot of precious time picking Barra McLean’s brains for a recipe concerning spicy buns, the island bus would be coming along any minute and she was anxious to catch it so that she could get home and listen to Morning Story on the new-fangled radio her Merchant Navy husband had just brought back from America. So, all in all, she considered that she had every right to contest her place in the queue and it was now her turn to draw herself up to her alarming height and thrust out her vast bosom till it was almost touching that of Mamma’s.
The two battle-axes faced one another, nostrils flared, guns at the ready; the rest of the shop settled back to watch with the greatest of interest, eager to see who would fire off first. But the promising battle never got off the ground for at that crucial moment the bus arrived at the harbour, the squealing of its brakes being the only indication it needed to let everyone know it was there.
Aggie, her message bag only half filled, shot Mamma a look that promised a revival of the argument at a later date and out of the shop she stomped in high dudgeon.
‘It’s no’ often Aggie is in such a hurry,’ Merry Mary observed.
‘Ach, she wanted to catch the bus,’ Barra explained. ‘She likes to listen to Morning Story on the wireless and Colin Mor has brought her a fine new one from America.’
Mamma pricked up her ears at mention of the bus: she was beginning to believe that she had landed in a place that might have been Mars, so lacking did it appear to be in modern amenities.
‘There is a bus on this island?’ she enquired excitedly, visualizing herself being transported to the nearest town, where she could get down to her shopping in earnest.
‘Ay, you could call it a bus – at least –’ Kate purported a great show of doubt and, addressing herself to her contemporaries, she went on in some puzzlement, ‘I’ve often wondered – is it a bus?’
‘It might be a bus!’ came the chorus.
‘Or it might be the Loch Ness monster in person,’ Jim Jim said with a grin, ‘the way it lumbers along on dry land wi’ its bones sticking into every one o’ my bones.’
‘If Erchy would wash the damt thing we could maybe see if it says “bus” on it,’ Robbie hazarded, putting on a great display of helpfulness.
‘Pah! The comedy I do not find!’ Mamma spat. ‘I would like to know please’ – it was the first time she had used the word ‘please’ – ‘if it goes to a town where I can buy the better food.’
It was Mamma’s bad luck that the only sobering influence present in Merry Mary’s shop that day wasn’t in a mood to be helpful. Barra normally tried to keep the peace, but Mamma Jodl’s belligerent attitude had seriously affected her reasoning nature and she was the first to speak.
‘A town, you say?’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Well, there is the Clachan of Croy – though I wouldny call that a town . . .’
‘No,’ Kate chimed in, her face perfectly composed, ‘it is more in the nature o’ a small city – a very noisy place, I never go there myself unless I can help it.’
‘A – city.’ Lovingly, Mamma rolled the word round her tongue and without ado she gathered up her bags and went bustling away outside to the waiting bus.
Everyone looked after her, round-eyed.
‘You shouldny have done that, Kate,’ Barra reproved. ‘I admit I was going to have a wee bit fun wi’ her but I wouldny have went that far.’
Robbie supported his wife’s words, ‘No, it wasny very nice to do that to a stranger – and a furriner into the bargain.’
But Kate was unrepentant. ‘Ach, it serves the bossy besom right – and just think – she’ll get to see the island in style and will experience firsthand the delights o’ our island bus.’
Very determinedly, Mamma walked the short distance to the harbour, boarded the bus, and settled herself behind the driver’s seat. To supplement his income, Erchy had purchased the vehicle some years ago, and, with the aid of a local-government subsidy, he managed to make a fair profit, especially in the tourist season when trips round the island were in reasonably high demand. Visitors’ cars weren’t allowed on the island because of the narrow and often dangerous roads and also because of the difficulty of shipping them over on the steamer.
So people like Erchy had quite a monopoly over the question of transport, though he was apt to bemoan his lot and make out that running the bus didn’t pay and that he was presented with considerable difficulties when it came to maintaining the vehicle. Any servicing it got was carried out by himself at the side of his cottage. Tam said he didn’t know the difference between a spark plug and a bolt, and there might have been some truth in that, for Erchy was anything but mechanically minded, but he cheerfully upheld the view that any sort of bus was better than none and no one needed to use it if they didn’t want to.
He knew fine, of course, that people would use it whether they liked it or no as few of them owned a car, which presented a great deal of problems when it came to getting from A to B. All things considered, Erchy and his ramshackle bus were in near-constant demand, except, of course, for when he had to exchange his bus driver’s role for that of the island postman, or even occasionally for a ‘funeral assistant’, when he was called on to drive a dearly departed to the kirkyard in the elegant Rolls Royce that Todd the Shod had won in a competition some years ago and which he hired out to wedding and funeral parties. Over the years people had become used to Erchy in all his various guises and the topic of how he kept his bus tacked together had grown stale with the passing of time.
Thus Mamma found herself on a lumpy, hard bench, surrounded by faces she didn’t know and which didn’t interest her anyway. The well near the driver’s seat was a jumble of parcels and boxes as Erchy hated cramming up his post van with the more bulky items, since it meant he had to waste time searching through them every time he came to a stop. It was f
ar easier to carry them on the bus, and it didn’t matter if they were accompanied by the odd creel of fish or a sack or two of rabbits. The bus had become quite a favourite rendezvous for those interested in the barter system and many a fresh salmon, poached from Burnbreddie’s river, had been furtively exchanged for some other ill-gotten gain. Erchy himself had often accepted a few rainbow trout in lieu of a fare and he was quite happy to add the tag of bootlegger to his various other titles.
There was always a distinct odour of fish in the bus. It hung in the air to mingle disagreeably with other smells of mothballs, mints, tobacco, whisky, sweat and stale beer. Mamma wrinkled her nose in disgust and sat fretting for the driver to appear so that she would catch the shops in Croy before they shut.
But Erchy was in no hurry, he was too busy discussing football with some local lads who had been to the mainland to see some of the last matches of the season and who were only too anxious to tell him about their experiences, both in and out of the football grounds. When he finally appeared, to take his place behind the wheel, he was whistling cheerily and was so carried away with good humour he peered into his mirror and shouted, ‘Ride a pink pig on the highway to Nigg!’ followed by, ‘Bums ahoy on the road to Croy!’
The menfolk merely grinned at his nonsense but one or two of the womenfolk expressed their disapproval in loud snorts while Aggie, who had not yet forgiven Erchy for mistaking her mouth for a post box, glared at his reflection in the mirror and hunched herself dourly into her seat.
Mamma tapped Erchy on the shoulder with a none too gentle finger and requested that he drop her off at Croy, to which he grinned and sang, ‘Croy, Croy! The next best thing – to Troy.’
The bus started up. They were moving off when a flying figure waved them down and in came a stringy-looking, garrulous visitor, wearing baggy shorts under a cracked and roomy waterproof. She plumped herself down beside Mamma and immediately began to talk, too taken up with describing some adventure she’d had to notice Mamma’s lack of response.
Stranger on Rhanna Page 13